Brian Austin Green is getting real about parenting.
On a Monday, October 2, episode of Lance Bass’s podcast “Frosted Tips with Lance Bass,” Green, 50, opened up about his son Kassius Lijah Marcil-Green, 21, coming out as gay. The Beverly Hills: 90210 actor admitted that it was initially “a challenge” due to Green’s lack of understanding around the subject.
“It’s been fascinating,” he told the ‘NSync alum. “It’s been a challenge just because honestly, my son being gay was just unknown for me.”
After talking with his son, however, Green said he began to see a whole new perspective.
“I would get into these conservations with Kash where it was like I really wanted to understand the things that seemed so different to me at first,” said Green. “And then you realize, ‘Oh, this isn’t different at all.’ It’s just your choice of partner. It doesn’t affect me at all.”
He continued, “And that’s the thing I’m always trying to beat into people now — it does not affect you. Why do you care so much? And why are you trying to somehow bully your feelings and your opinion into something that literally does not affect you at all?”
During their conversation, Bass, who came out as gay in 2006, commended Green on his parenting.
“He was so lucky to be able to be in your family because so many kids out there don’t get that,” said Bass. “And even if their parents accept them, there’s a lot of times when the kid still knows that they still disagree with it.”
Green shares Kassius with ex-girlfriend Vanessa Marcil. After the couple split in 2003, they entered a custody battle over Kassius — and they continued to publicly slam each other over the years. In February, Green criticized Marcil, 54, for being absent during their son’s childhood and said that his ex-wife, Megan Fox, stepped in to help raise him.
“Megan and I bust our assess to give Kass a well-rounded childhood since his mom was rarely there,” Green wrote in an Instagram Story post at the time. “I’m assuming that’s why she posts so much of him now. When will she just GO AWAY.”
More recently, Green said that navigating coparenting with Marcil has been “difficult from the beginning” as he opened up about the situation on his and fiancé Sharna Burgess’ “Old-ish” podcast.
Burgess added that Green suffered from vertigo “for years,” making it “very difficult” for him to see his son with Marcil.
“Those years that he wasn’t able to go see Kassisus, Vanessa made no effort to make sure Brian got time with him,” she said. “Instead, she painted him as an absent father who chose not to be around for him. And I’m sure that information was fed to Kass, and I can’t imagine how damaging that was for him.”
That same month, Green spoke to Us about Marcil.
“There are two sides to all of it, and looking back on it, there were absolute mistakes made on both sides because we were young and new parents and didn’t understand,” Green told Us on September 21. “There’s a part of me that wishes I could go back and fix things, of course, but then there’s also a part of me that knows that if I hadn’t experienced exactly what I experienced in parenting, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Green has a total of five children. In addition to Kassius, he shares three children with Fox: Noah, 11, Bodhi, 9, and Journey, 7. He welcomed his son, Zane, with Burgess in June 2022. The couple got engaged in September after three years of dating.
